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Catalogs
The main catalogs documenting tarot decks are the three volumes of Stuart R.
Kaplan's "The Encyclopedia of Tarot", published in 1978, 1986 and 1990
respectively. A fourth volume has been promised for years but has so far (spring
2005) not appeared. I have used Kaplan's "Encyclopedia..." as a basis,
supplementing it and completing it with my own catalogs.
Since Manteia in itself constitutes a catalog of mantic tools (i.e. tarot- and
cartomancy decks and the like) emerging in the period 1989-97 and thus became a
follow up upon "The Encyclopedia of Tarot", there are still gaps. In my
collection I have many tarot decks published before 1989, which can not be found
in any of the three volumes of "The Encyclopedia of Tarot", and all decks
published after Manteia stopped publication were not documented.
Furthermore, cartomantic decks (apart from tarot), had never been documented
towards anything near completeness. To fill this gap, "Ouroboros" published from
1985 to 1989 a three volume catalog, named "The Prophetic Cards", detailing all
cartomantic packs in Spilkammeret’s collection at that time, a total of 470
decks. When Manteia was published, it came to be a follow-up on "The Prophetic
Cards 1-3" in the same way, as it was a follow up upon Kaplan’s "The
Encyclopedia...".
When publication of Manteia ceased, registration of new decks continued in a
limited loose leaf edition called "Catalog of Mantic Tools". The catalog was
offered to former Manteia subscribers only. The "Mantic Tools" catalog describe
all acquisitions to Spilkammeret’s collections of tarot and cartomantic packs
after 1997 and it is planned to also include all tarot decks published before
1990, which are not listed in Kaplan’s "Encyclopedias"...
These three units: "The Prophetic Tools vol. 1-3", "Manteia, issues 1-16" and
"Catalog of Mantic Tools" seen as a whole are, along with Kaplan’s "The
Encyclopedia Vol. I-III", the best bid on a complete list of 20th century tarot
and cartomantic decks. There is, however, a problem: all my catalogs and back issues of Manteia sold
out long ago. By and by, I hope to make them accessible on these pages as pdf-files.
Another publication from Spilkammeret is a "Bibliography of Books in Spilkammeret" (1993) and later
supplements. The most relevant parts of this bibliography can be seen here.
Links:
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All contents contributed by K. Frank Jensen
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